I have to admit, it gets easy to make excuses; even when they pertain to yourself. Excuses absolve and allow you the luxury of believing more in the excuse than in the reality it seeks to suppress. Even for someone like me who believes in accountability to such extreme degrees, excuses have infiltrated my psyche. They come in the form of rationalizing what is happening rather than looking at what is happening for what it actually is. Oddly, I only do this when it comes to my sleeping patterns. I am a minimal sleeper by nature. A couple of hours and I’m good. Or so it used to be.
Those damn headaches started and everything changed. From virtually no sleep to not being able to get enough sleep. This was an obvious reaction to the cluster headaches. The only time I was not in pain or nauseated was when I was sleeping; which inevitably would be interrupted by the headache’s return. Those months of my life were the worst months to have been alive… the headaches were just that bad. Almost three months they lasted.
Since then, my sleeping patterns have never been the same. I never had a circadian rhythm, so I blew the change off. Years later I have identified a pattern. As of late, I have been able to ward off the headaches… but not the nightmares; yet. You see, it works this way.
I will begin to sleep deep and hard for a week or two. As the deep sleeps progress, I get these images in dreams. They mean nothing individually, just small pieces of a very large and very complicated puzzle locked deep in the recesses of my mind. Buried away, out of the light of day – until I sleep deeply in the early stages of a pattern that is again unfolding. Slowly they merge to connect horror to reality. One of the pieces of the puzzled dream that begins to take its own form. Always a smell, a sound or a feeling and never a vision of an object or face; they always come later. That is what brings on the night sweats and nightmares.
The deep sleeping has again returned. It has been about a week now. Dismissed to the cool fall nights in the Arizona Mountains. The images of seeming nothingness led to the hoot of an owl. I love owls. Their calls calm me. This owl’s call took me back time to a place locked deeply away from all other aspects of my life. A compartment within a compartment. That of a child slaughtered by my hand. The nightmares are close at hand now is what this means; not that the cool, fall nights in the Arizona mountains are helping me sleep better; where owls just happen to be plentiful.
Kate's Diary has 13 Tales; this is number three. The Owl and the Hog’s Tooth.
I was a good shot. From what I was told, only the third Corpsman to go through Scout Sniper school. “Damn, you’re a good shot.” I wasn’t really; I just understood the math and science. Being a geek has it benefits. Cold air does what cold air does, as does warm air, as does humid and dry air. The earth’s spin, the wind and gravity all have their impact; some are variable and some are constant. The art behind the science is a simple matter of pitting these factors against the constant of ballistics in order to predict a precise outcome. It is all quite simple for a Philly kid who spent his school years nose deep in books. Some shooters are better at this than others. Being wrong means missing which could prove fateful. If not for you, even worse; for someone you have sought to protect.
I hated the Barret. It was 30 pounds of serious ass kicking; for the shooter that is. A day on the range with that beast will leave you feeling as if you had been in a train wreck wishing you had not survived. Never would I volunteer for such torture. But, I was “a good shot” and sometimes you just have no choice in such matters. Thirty pounds of weapon accompanied me into the depths of the sweltering jungle. Full of joy I was not. The good news was the other snipers had to go deeper into the jungle than Mitch and I. We parked in a crevasse atop a cliff overlooking a valley patrolled by American Forces. The problem was from across the valley. The Sailors on patrol where not known for their skills on land. More concerned about haste than their own safety, they were a sniper’s wet dream come true. Our job was simple. Interrupt the dream at half mast.
An owl perched above. His call deep… immediately followed by the feeling of dread. I readied and sighted in on the spot I would most likely take if I were “him” hunting troops in the valley below. There was no movement, but if he was going to show, this would be the point of both his arrival and subsequent departure. The breeze gently blowing the leaves to the east met with branches and grass from the valley floor below. How had I not noticed?! It was him. Sitting against a tree he watched and waited. One thousand twelve hundred and four yards across the valley, some fifty feet higher than our position. Advantage, “him.” Potentially in deep shit, us.
The week prior there had been four sniper attacks leaving one dead, two injured and one just plain old lucky for sneezing when he did. He preferred the longer shot and left no trails of his direction of travel. He preferred the head shot. Actually, he fancied the face shot. He liked the idea that his prey was looking at him. He was arrogant. He knew the range of our weapon systems and felt safe to unleash his fury from beyond reach of his foe. This guy I kinda liked. The owl brought him to my attention. I watched him of grass and dead branches feeling who he was. What he was not good at. The variables. The wind, maybe a slightly flawed weapon. No, the wind at distance was the problem. It was what he could not see that he could not anticipate. He should have been a book worm in his younger years. It would have made him an even better shot.
Studying his position it was evident he had four firing positions. One into the valley and three slightly downward to probable counter sniper positions. He was smart and seemingly experienced. Just not well read. It’s called air drop. In the warmth of a tropical day the air drops in the center of a valley despite its warmth causing a falling turbulence. You read such things out of boredom, but if you do not read them you don’t know about them. Think about it; when is the last time you and your buds sat around a table full of beers talking about air drop?
The owls call again in the middle of the hot tropical day. It was time. Across the valley there was finally movement. Drawn up was a rifle. A modified late model SVDK. Its devastating effects are not to be taken lightly. Tell tale was the ¾ side mount south paw scope. Poor, poor habits. “Just now picking up your weapon Slappy? Big, big mistake pal.” And the thunder of the barret echoed throughout the valley. He never stood a chance. The round sliced the thick air, matched the air drop and slid into the cross wind at the valley’s end; the red spray told a tale that has no end.
They say the best way to counter a sniper is with a sniper. The better man always wins. The smarter, craftier, more disciplined man has the advantage despite any seeming disadvantages. I wanted a trophy; the silver colored 9.3 mm overly weighted tool of his craft. We arrived to him the following day.
He was but a child. Thirteen or fourteen at best. Innocence was not lost; it was robbed from life by the hand of a man who understood the science from a lad who had yet to begin to discover the art. The drop was ever so slightly overestimated and the round impacted not in the chest, but very ironically in the top of the jaw just below his nose. Being hit by his SVDK at a thousand yard would be like being shot point plank by a .357. At 1400 plus given the drop it would have been like a 9 mm from 30 yards as his round of choice very quickly loses energy beyond 800 yards. Hell, he would have been lucky to even get within ten feet of me despite his elevated position. This child, though deadly, had not a clue as to what he was doing. On a 600 yard range he could blow an engine block, beyond that he failed to appreciate the science of ballistics. He was but a child, what do you really expect?
The reality of what I had done did not kick in right away. It was the first hand account of practically blowing a person’s head off that struck me. What remained of his head dangled by soft tissues of the neck on the left and what remained of the jaw bone on the right. The impact immediately severed his brainstem. Death was instant; as instant as the flash I am sure he saw. He never even heard the blast that followed a hand full of seconds later at that distance. The round exploded into the tree leaving him in shambles. The power of the barret was never in question. Seeing it firsthand a day later after wondering for a day leaves you removed from what you have done. Having a medical background, your curiosity is answered with; “damn.”
I picked the SVDK up, ejected the round destined for the fate of another and pocketed it. I had my hogs tooth. A sniper felled by a sniper. And that was cool. Mitch slung the rifle over his shoulder and we headed back down into the valley.
It was not until I was back in the States before I began to understand what I had done. Her name was Jeane, an old friend who had a son of thirteen. His curious innocence is what got me. He was so different from the child left sitting against the tree practically decapitated in the tropical region so very far away.
“PJ, what did you do on deployment? Did you have fun?” No one knew what I did other than being in the military. There is no discomfort in asking such a question. The only discomfort is found in not being able to answer it honestly. When he asked, I began to understand. I walked out. I could not even face this child. I got in my car, not saying a word and left. I drove for hours that night and then tucked it neatly away so I could move forward with my life. I was just beginning to put into perspective the impact I had on life itself.
It was when my son was born. That is when the circle of horror became complete. He was premature and tiny. I took him home wrapped ever so neatly in a receiving blanket the drowned his little body. I sat crossed legged on living room and lovingly laid him down and unwrapped him to see my little me and take him in for him. Pure and true innocence completely dependent upon me for survival. It was the single most incredible feeling in the world. Out of nowhere came the vision of this child left on a cliff of a tropical mountain on the other side of the world. Not so neatly tucked away after all. It marred the single best memory of life. To this day, I don’t know if my tears were of joy or that of pain. My wife said she had never seen that look on face before. That it scared her. Probably the latter. In looking back I freely admit I wish to not share the joy of my son’s arrival home with horror of the beastly things I have done to others. There are times when I look at my own son and do not see him; I see what was left on the cliff that day.
I spoke with my son on his birthday this weekend. He is eleven now and underwhelmed with the purpose of birthday celebrations. He liked his gifts, he appreciated them, but he did not see the need in recognizing a change in age that cannot be felt. He talked more about what he taught himself on his day from school. A chip off the old block that kid is. Not real sure if that is a good thing. In knowledge there is power and he knows that he can’t know enough.
His mother complains about the same things mom complained about when I was a child. I hated birthdays at young age too and my mom would explain that it was tradition.
“Just because it is tradition does not mean I have to do it.” I told her. She just shook her head. She’d complain that I would stop doing chores to sit down and read. My quest for knowledge through the priorities of others to the wayside. Interesting seeing genes at work. My son has the potential become the beast the military turned me into; and people wonder why I go through such extremes to fund his college now. In certain aspects I want him to be completely unlike me.
It’s funny. Before our last series of missions we had to undergo a battery of tests with one them being psychological evaluations. “ABNORMALLY WELL ADJUSTED FOR SPECIALIZED MILITARY OPERATIONS” it closed with.
Really?
